Everything was organised. The current caretakers at the property we’ll be looking after had expressed a wish to stay on an extra month until the end of October, & wanting to have the place to themselves. Here we were, ‘on the doorstep’ & suddenly 6 weeks to kill, but with nowhere to go. Beautiful though they are, there are only a limited number of spots close to Broome where we can free camp, & most of those have very limited or non-existent shade, a commodity we have come to value as the daily temperatures here begin to rise. Staying in caravan parks for 6 weeks was not an alternative we wished to consider, from both a cost perspective & an ‘ambience’ perspective. Occasional nights in such places suit us, but certainly not for 6 weeks. The property owners had kindly arranged for us to stay at another beachside property until we took over toward the end of October. It was described as a beautiful place with nothing expected of us other than to relax & enjoy ourselves. After two weeks at James Price Point we returned to Broome to get supplies, & phoned our contact about the alternative property. It was then that things fell in a bit of a heap. Our contact clearly had different ideas about our stay from what we had expected. The call was dominated by his demands for us to be tidying up the place in return for staying. We had no problem with helping out, but did feel uncomfortable with what seemed to us like an intimidatory & demanding manner, especially for a first conversation. Hard to pin down, but it certainly had our alarm bells ringing. The long & the short of it was that we listened but were unwilling to kowtow to what felt like bullying, feeling that to do so would likely set a precedent for our time there. As it turned out we think the chap realised that we were not the sort of folk with whom his approach would work & he subsequently decided the accommodation was no longer available to us. He informed us of this by phone just as we were leaving Broome to drive up to the property. Possibly he was just having a bad day, possibly we made a cultural faux pas. Nevertheless in hindsight we think we were lucky with the outcome, but at the time we were left somewhat perplexed & ‘lost’, literally by the side of the road.
Further contact with the owners of the Wet season property was reassuring. They asked if we could wait a day or two whilst they tried to find us somewhere else for the next few weeks. And so in the course of 20 minutes the best laid plans were laid aside & we instead left Broome heading east rather than north, on a whimsy, to visit an old favourite camp spot on the Fitzroy River.130kms to a spot we stayed at in 2009, & one we recommended to friends who now rate it as one of their favourites too. The Fitzroy River is huge, running northward into the bottom of King Sound, but at this time of the year it is ‘quiet’ compared to it’s wet season persona. It is still tidal, up to Telegraph Pool, but south of that are a series of long waterholes which sustain large populations of crocodiles throughout the Dry. These are mostly freshwater crocs, but even so, some are fairly large. Camped on a highish bank alongside the river, we felt we had a good spot, both for the views & for safety, as although unseen, the chances of there being no saltwater crocs (far more dangerous) was slim. From our vantage point we watched anything up to 20 crocs at a time. The ‘freshies’ were all pretty laid back & if approached would take off. The numbers of hawks was quite remarkable, the most common being Black Kites, sometimes as many as 20 to 30 together, but commonly alone or in pairs. Black Necked Storks (formerly known as Jabirus) & Brolgas impressed with their size, Red Tailed Black Cockatoos with their bright red ‘petticoats, Black Winged Stilts, Banded Dotterells, Corellas in large numbers, ibis, Egrets Great & Intermediate, White Faced Herons were all among the Attenborough-like setting which we just sat & absorbed. Our spur of the moment decision to go there had been a good one.
Even better was the fact that there was phone reception & thus, our property owners, as good as their word were able to maintain contact with us & within a day had arranged somewhere else for us to stay for the next month. So two nights by the Fitzroy River & then back to Broome & up the Dampier Peninsula – almost to the tip. We are now on the narrowest section of the peninsula staying in the tiny community of Chile Creek, a short distance, via sandy forest track, out of Lombadina. (See Map). By ’tiny’ I mean just 3 or 4 houses plus a couple to accomodate visiting family. We arrived yesterday, were made welcome but as yet are still feeling a bit lost. We have no wish to be ‘demanding tourists’ & want to respect other’s privacy, but hope that over the course of the month we are here that we might get to know folk better. We are in what is a campground which appears not to have been in use for a while, alongside the houses, all within a small clearing in the vine thicket forest & a short distance from the beach & Chile Creek itself. We have fixed up the campground showers & toilets so we can use them, have the use of a fridge in the ‘community office’ & have tapped into the community’s substantial solar system. The location is ideal as a base for exploration of the top end of the peninsula which we intend to do, but for now we are slowly making ourselves ‘at home’.
Below are some pics mainly taken at the Fitzroy River. Photography there was quite limited as we experienced high winds & dust storms on both days. I remain frustrated at as yet being unable to get any decent shots of the Red Tailed Black Cockatoos. Striking to see, but elusive to capture.
